Thinking about the concept of a social platform, I believe that it should encourage people to communicate and express their opinions and argue over them given the opportunity.
As a Steemit user I would presume that seeing an article that proposes to take military actions against a nuclear armed country would make anyone want to read it and maybe comment on it. And so it happened. After reading the comment section you can see that there are quite a lot of users dealing with the subject. So I dont really get the 'address the author thing'. My comment does not have to directly address yourself, nor any special group in particular. It is just the way I am seeing an article that deals with a really hot topic and its there for anyone to read, upvote or dislike like yourself.

About the inaction thing, I am still trying to understand the difference between action and inaction, since history does often seem to complicate these two.